Ancient Gamer challenged me a onth ago to put up some of the music I listen to here on Strolen. he asked abou Ethiopian and european jazz. So I went trough Youtube and amazingly there are people that have transferred some of the old stuff from records to digital. The quality differs on many of these, some did a better job than others in cleaning the sound. Some hissing, popping and windy sounds will occur;D

Ethiopian Jazz

Mulatu Astatke is an Ethiopian musician and arranger. He is known as the father of Ethio-jazz. He combines his jazz and Latin music influences with traditional Ethiopian music. Ethiopia may not be the place you would expect to find high quality jazz being produced.

However Mulatu Astatqe is no ordinary Ethiopian.He was a singular finger who was one of the only Ethiopians who studied Western music and incorporated it into his own indigenous music.The result is a stunning blend of slightly off kilter jazz mixed with hints of African music.

What is so refreshing is that Mulatu is free from the constraints of traditional jazz rules.His music has been hard to obtain until the large reissue programme that has been undertaken by the Ethiopique crew.

He is now finally starting to get some of the recognition that he deserves and modern producers such as Will Holland otherwise known as Quantic are starting to name check him on their records so exposing him to a whole new audience.

Central European Jazz(Early German Jazz and some other old stuff I enjoy)

Some eric Borchard stuff, the Berliners really caught on. The flourishing german jazz scene of 1920-30 was partially destroyed during ww2. Much the same was khmer music was under Pol Pot. Anyway enjoy.

Paul Reischmann was an Austrian Trumpeter, active from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was also famous for his weird scat singing performances. This extraordinary rare and early Monola recording from 1935 is exemplary for his singing style, which was quite advanced for Austrian measures at that time. Cab Calloway's influence is obvious.

Over to some other stuff; Mindred Bailey, This lovely song was recorded for Brunswick on November 24th, 1931. Despite being a big woman, Bailey had a sweet, rather small yet very expressive voice, and quite a light, unique swinging vocal style. This is american

Bix Beiderbecke- One of the leading names in 1920s jazz, Beiderbecke's career was cut short by chronic poor health, exacerbated by alcoholism. Bix Beiderbecke absorbed the music he heard of New Orleans jazz cornetists. He was influenced by Nick LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

Original Dixieland Jass Band was a New Orleans, Dixieland Jazz band. The ODJB were frequently billed as the "Creators of Jazz", because they were the first band to record jazz commercially and to have hit recordings in the new genre.

This is it for now. If anyone is interested I can go trough other styles of music that I enjoy. Swedish and russian folk jazz, japanese garage roch from the 60's, Cambodian intellectual rock, you name it;)

Our brethren in the east, the swedes, are known for many things. Amongst them their ability to make music. There are many Strolenites of swedish descent, and one pure blood: Ouborous (or how the heck his nick is spelled)

Detektivbyr?n - Om du m?ter varg(Bureau of detectives - If you should meet a warg)